Black Gate

Last Sunday I ran my first session of Torg Eternity, meaning I can now finish my review of the game by discussing how the rules worked in practice (the first part is here, with a description of the basic idea of the mechanics and of the game setting — an Earth invaded by seven different dimensions). Worth noting to start with that I’d been spending time on the message boards for the game, discussing the different realms and how I wanted to play them. Some minor questions I’d had about rule interpretation had been cleared up; more than fair to say I found the boards a useful resource for gamemasters, especially since one of the designers, Deanna Gilbert, is very active in responding to questions and comments.

Along with the Torg Eternity rulebook, I had two anthologies of short adventures, the Day One collection and the Delphi Missions: Rising Storm collection. The Day One adventures followed pregenerated characters through adventures set on the first day of the invasions. That was useful in giving me a sense of what the opening of the invasions was like, but I didn’t immediately see anything I wanted to adapt to a regular group — each of the Day One stories followed a group of Core Earthers caught up in the invasion of one specific cosm, whereas my players had characters from across the realms. The Delphi Missions adventures ranged from relatively brief scenarios to stories that’d clearly occupy a full session or more of play. Again, though, all the adventures focussed on one cosm. I could see the benefit for an introductory collection of adventures; each showed something of the feel of a given realm. But what always made Torg fascinating to me was the crossing-over of realities.

Both books had some very well-designed scenarios in them. I particularly liked “The Dumas Gambit” in Delphi Missions, which describes a setting in the Cyberpapacy occupied by various factions of street gangs and then introduces the players with an objective that sets the factions against each other. Meanwhile, there’s a moment in the Day One adventures that really gave me a feel for the splatterpunk reality of Tharkold just by describing a certain corpse the characters find. That sort of thing makes both books worth looking at for Torg Eternity gamemasters, I think, moments and descriptions that help establish the feel of the different realities, the kind of stories that get told in them.

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Disclaimer: No chits were punched in the playing of this game.

I recently obtained a near-mint copy of the 1979 bagged version of DeathMaze for my collection. My interest was in its design and gameplay mechanics that some people thought linked it to other SPI products such as the Citadel of Blood mini-game, the Sword and Sorcery boardgame, and the DragonQuest RPG.

Because I collect these games, I look for examples that are in un-played condition. I take the effort to make my own game pieces that I then use to play the games with. In the case of DeathMaze I simply made my own copies of the ½ inch square cardboard game piece counters, normally referred to as chits by war gamers. I also carefully removed the staples from the rule book, photo copied it and reassembled it with the original staples. I now have a rule book that I can handle without worry of damage.

The original near-mint game has been packed away in my collection. SPI historically allowed for the copy of record sheets and for reproducing damaged or lost counters. The back cover of the DeathMaze rulebook is a complete black and white printing of the game’s counter sheet, provided for just such a purpose.

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